I am entering this conversation on the grounds that I think adding ETW and Burning Wish can make this deck better specifically with regards to counterspells.

I hang my head in the lameness of quoting myself. I need a segue and I don't feel creative enough to come up with something new.
Quote Originally Posted by myself
I did some testing. This is what I used.

Lands
1 Bayou
1 Taiga

Green
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Tinder Wall
4 Land Grant

Red
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Desperate Ritual
4 Rite of Flame
4 Burning Wish
4 Seething Song
2 Empty the Warrens

Black
4 Infernal Tutor
4 Dark Ritual

Artifacts
4 Goblin Charbelcher
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
4 Chrome Mox

Side Board//
2 Shattering Spree
4 Xantid Swarm
4 Duress
1 Empty the Warrens
...other stuff I didn't use

Goldfishing went as follows in 42 games, drop the highest and lowest (so out of 40).

avg: 2.975
%1: 10.0
%2: 22.5
%3: 42.5
%4: 12.5
%5: 10.0
%6: 02.5

These numbers are not the turn you go off, they are kill turns assuming attacking with little 1/1's off of Warrens where applicable and includes opponent blocks and spot removal estimations.

Whatever. The real testing came against Gobs and Thresh.

Gobs - 5-0 matches including sbing. I won all 10 games. He had Needles, but he did not have Chalice.

UGR Thresh - 2-8 - matches including sb. He had Stifle which hurt a lot.

My initial estimates were not really accurate. FoW is still very hard to overcome at times. BUT, the Pithing Needle brought in by Gobs was no big deal and this deck does not kill itself.
Xantids should have been main. The deck can USUALLY go off on turn 1. That's way more than 50%. FoW makes that kinda moot, though.

Questions:

1. Beyond Xantids and Duress what else can we include to improve this?
2. This appears to be flat-out better than the old Belcher builds. Is there anything I am forgetting?
In the 10 matches against Theshold my opponent made a poor decision on whether to counter acceleration only 3 times. Part of the problem was that I am using Land Grant. Yeah, he gets to see my hand <--dumbass. So FoW is still very hard to overcome at times.


@TheRack, I actually had Cabal Ritual early on, but discovered that I was "going off" so early that I never ever had Threshold. That is still true after more than 60 goldfish and another 30 or so real life games. So I am quite sure Cabal Ritual is stinky. Desperate Ritual has actually been able to splice into a copy of itself from time to time.